All Teeth Accounted For

It’s one of the enduring mysteries of our age, today’s comic only scratches the surface. And though broaching the subject publicly is probably going to bring the gravy train to a halt, it’s a bizarre enough tale to warrant the telling.

About four years ago - in the legendary Apartment 26, before there was any Penny Arcade to reference it - Gabe started to get EGM. I don’t mean that he started to get it because he subscribed to it or some shit - I’m saying that all of the sudden, unannounced and uninvited, EGM started coming to the house. Sort of weird, but not Rod Serling territory. He continued to get it for the rest of that year, and when he moved out because I did the Marriage Thing, I was looking forward to keeping the magical EGM subscription for myself.

Except it followed him.

He’s moved two more times since then. Once across town, once across the state. Never fills out any forms. Every now and then, they send him a little note that says “Seriously - this time, no more EGM,” and it’s bullshit because no-one can stop Gabe getting EGM any more than they can abridge any other physical law. They are inextricable, like an orange and the color orange. He gets EGM because he can’t not get it.

Gabe and Monkey gabed and monkeyed practically all day Friday, and the results of that clash can be viewed here. I couldn’t care less. I’m playing the game that came in the box, and I’m enjoying it. I don’t know if Raven’s prior experience with (the underrated) third-person action/adventure Heretic II came in handy at all, but I have half a mind to compare the names in my manuals. Something in one of Gabe’s epic rants caught my eye, though - it sounded like someone offered to get a mod (like the one he described) started using the Unreal Tournament engine. Gabe suggested that, with much of the work required already built in to Jedi Outcast, any planned mod should take advantage of the fact. It’s sound advice, but it goes deeper than that: the likelyhood of your Star Wars mod getting Foxed seems terribly high. That may turn out to be the best thing about Jedi Knight II - that the mods people have been itching to make, utilizing the recognized wealth of Star Wars IP, can now (seemingly) operate under official auspices.

I hate April Fool’s Day. People dick around with me every ten minutes on average, there’s no Goddamn shortage of it that needs to be rectified via a holiday explicitly for shitheads. Human beings are fundamentally monstrous, duplicitous skullfuckers, and setting aside time to encourage the fact strikes me as poor strategy. Lots of places are going to tell you shit today, is it true, is it not true, etc. I only mention that stupid AFD because I want to make sure you know when something is on the up and up: The GIA is closing down. I’m not making that up, and neither are they. Many current staffers are moving forward with the blessing of their forebears, setting up a new site called GameForms (I don’t know what that means). Like Slow News Day, right, only minus the shameful implosion.

My brother-in-law is in town for a week or so, and if these first three days are any bellwether of the next four, we’re going to spend the entire stretch indoors playing racing games. Monkey got the ball rolling with Project Gotham a ways back, and since then I’ve found myself really drawn to the genre - who knows if I’ll ever graduate to Gran Turismo 3, but the ones I have for the Xbox I consider necessary. Gotham I’ve already spoken about - as the heir to the Ridge Racer estate, it rewards precision and metes out unalloyed retribution for anything else. When he and I play it, we tend not to race head-to-head - focusing our efforts instead on defeating the machine. The newer of the two racing games, Rallisport Challenge, is the one we actually compete in. The controls are a little more accessible, the pace a bit more frantic, so it seems to lend itself to this sort of duty. Also, the graphics on Rallisport are incredible, even on a system where you can get used to things looking bad-ass. Who knows why I’m even going into it - if you have an Xbox, you probably own one or both of these already. I guess I’m just surprised by the level of enjoyment. I had to tell somebody.

The winner of the Embarrass Yourself contest claimed her Dungeon Siege-y victory with a massive, seventy megabyte video opus dense with degrading content. Batjew pointed me toward a utility to grab individual frames out, because no way on Earth am I going to host that shit here. I’m in the process of pulling out the choicest bits - including, but limited to, when she breaks her arm - and if it doesn’t get posted in the interim, I’ll just save it for Wednesday. The main thing is that her prize went out, thanks and praise be to Gas Powered and Microsoft for letting us do it.